alanwilliamson

I've always been amazed at how cumbersome it is sometimes to get up and running with web apps in general. Install a web server, install an app server. Sometimes you just want to knock up a quick one-page app to do something, or something to do a quick test with. 9 times of out 10, you end up piggy-backing onto an existing set-up, throw your page(s) into a sub-folder of that!

Introducing the revolution

For the past 3 months I have been pondering this. I wanted to come up with something that made developing CFML apps as quick and easy as possible. I wanted to build something that was zero installation, zero effort and most important, hassle free. I believe I have achieved that.

The OpenBD Desktop is nothing short of revolutionary when it comes to the speed and ease of development of web-apps. Simply point to a directory on your file system, and hit start! If that directory is not yet prepared for running OpenBD, then do not worry, the OpenBD Desktop, will auto prepare that folder for you copying the necessary files in there for you. All done in seconds. That is it! You are now ready.

No Jetty/Tomcat/JBoss configuration. No Apache/IIS configuration. Point click and start. It is that simple.

Deployed as a single Java Swing application, it will run on Windows, Linux and Mac with no problems whatsoever. Ships with the necessary scripts to get you up and running as soon as you unzip. Even with a Windows .exe file that you can easily create desktop shortcuts for.

Google App Engine

If that is not enough, how about a complete development environment for developing for Google App Engine? Throw the OpenBD Desktop into "Google App Engine" mode, (clicking a single radio button) and you are now running in a simulated Google App Engine environment. Need more? Of course you do.

Once you have finished your Google App Engine CFML app, then simply fill in your details, all 3 pieces of information (of which 2 of them are your Google login) and the OpenBD Desktop will automatically prepare your web app for you, optimizing the folders, removing unnecessary files and securely upload and deploy your app at Google. Watch pretty progress bars as you deploy your CFML app to the largest free CFML hosting environment in the world!

J2EE Deployments

Google App Engine is not the only export option you have. You can deploy to a single standard portable J2EE WAR file. This standard WAR file can then be literally dropped into any J2EE server, such as Tomcat, Jetty, JBoss for example. The OpenBD Desktop will prepare the necessary archive, removing and trimming all unnecessary files (such as log files, .svn/.cvs folders), ensuring you get what you need.

For example, if you install the OpenBDJam stack on your production server, you can take the WAR file produced and drop it there.

The OpenBD family is there to help you build and deploy apps no matter where you are ultimately destined for.

No more excuses

You can actually get up and running with a brand new web app, quicker than most people will download the small 60MB file! We want to get CFML into the hands of as many web developers as possible, because we believe when you see the power and ease to which CFML can offer, you won't look back.

It also gives people greater accessibility to the power offered by Google on its App Engine. With its very generous free quota limits (43,200,000 hits per day, 1GB in/out bandwidth free, 6.5hr CPU!) there is no literally no
more excuses for not utilizing the power of CFML.

You can have your one page app up and running in Google in literally under 5 minutes, from start to finish. Most of that time will be spent uploading to Google!

Give it a try now. Go and download the OpenBD Desktop and let us know what you think. As you can tell, we're pretty darn excited!